Tomorrow Will Be Dying
by Alixtii
Summary: Simon thought he was prepared to see his sister again. He was wrong. Simon and River, Simon and Kaylee.


**A/N: **Yes, this is Crazy Space Incest.

**Tomorrow Will Be Dying**

When Simon made his way onto Academy Station--in orbit around Regina--he had not seen his sister in person in eight years. He had kept in contact with her, of course, even at medacad, but even two-dimensional interplanetary video was expensive and the Alliance tariffs outrageous, so video messages were typically reserved for special occasions, birthdays and Christmas, and most of the time they corresponded through letters. Besides, even three-dimensional video (and his family was wealthy, but not that wealthy) was a poor substitute for reality.

Through all this time, he knew she was growing up, transforming from a girl into a woman. While she almost certainly knew at least as much as he did about human anatomy and physiology, she would sometimes turn to him for answers to her questions about the practical implications of her changing body, questions she didn't feel comfortable taking to their parents. He knew all this, at least intellectually.

His contacts had given him some information about what she may have been put through under the auspices of Project Pandora, and he had been prepared for the worst. He was ready to see her an unrecognizable stranger, beaten, scarred, emaciated, a shell of the sister he had known and loved.

Wheat he had not prepared for--but in retrospect he certainly _should_ have--was to find her an unrecognizable stranger who was really, really hot.

Well, not completely unrecognizable. The most recent capture he had of her was from a video message she had sent on her fourteenth birthday, and the seventeen-year-old woman he guided through the labyrinthine halls of the inner laboratories of Project Pandora did resemble her quite a bit. Still, there was a major disconnect in his mind between the nine-year-old girl he had grown up beside and the much more physically mature woman currently at his side, and that disconnect was just enough to negate the Westermarck effect and let genetic sexual attraction take over.

It was, all in all, a textbook case.

It was natural human neurophysiology.

It was not in any way his fault that he undeniably wanted very much to fuck his sister.

All of this ran through his mind as they made their escape. He tried to focus on the very real danger they were in, but River was wearing a skin-tight outfit that was more than a little distracting.

It was only later that he realized that as the thoughts were running through his mind, they were as a result also running through hers.

* * *

As soon as they got to (relative) safety, Simon of course immediately examined his sister. They didn't have the resources to run the neurological scans he really wanted to perform, but he could perform the basic physical.

Now, of course he had had plenty of female patients before, a good percent of whom he found attractive, and still he had never had any difficulty being professional. It was like a mental switch you had to be able to throw. It was a necessity, to focus on finding what was wrong and make it better.

None of his previous female patients, however, had been his sister, and he disconcertingly found that suddenly the little mental switch in the back of his bed was broken. As he slipped the chestpiece of his stethoscope under River's shirt, he couldn't help but be very aware of the womanly breasts which suddenly were underneath his hand, and certainly hadn't been there when River was nine. He lost track of her heartbeats three times in a row, each time having to start counting again from zero.

In general, she was in wonderful health, a very athletic seventeen year old female. The only physical signs that she was anything other than that were the tiny scars on her face, feet, and hands, and a couple of laser surgery scars on the back of her head.

She was not a virgin. He tried not to think about what that meant.

"This same flower that smiles today," River quoted, smiling up at him, "tomorrow will be dying."

He wasn't a psychologist, but his final diagnosis was that his sister was clinically insane, causes unknown.

* * *

"You'll have to take her far away, away from the Core," said a woman, seemingly the leader of the cell, who had been introduced to him only as Èrshi Yī. "She can't be seen at all--they're be looking for her too hard. But a man travelling alone just might make it."

Simon glanced doubtfully at his sister. "I can't take her away if I'm travelling alone." There was no way he was leaving his sister.

"Oh, you'll bring her with you--as luggage, in cryo-stasis."

Simon frowned. He was a doctor; he knew the dangers of cryo-stasis. If everything was not done exactly right, there was a chance she would not wake up again at all.

"If you stay in the core, they will find you, and kill you both," Èrshi Yī promised him. "You have no choice."

* * *

Èrshi Yī promised River that there was no danger from the cryo-stasis, but it seemed pretty clear that his sister had figured out somehow that it was a lie. They had to literally hold her down (they couldn't use the safeword, she had to be conscious, for reasons which despite being a doctor Simon didn't completely understand), as she resisted kicking and screaming, as they injected her with the necessary drugs, stripped her of her clothing, then forced her into the stasis chamber and closed the door on top of her, its heavy metal muffling her screams.

* * *

_"Bad, in the Latin." Translation through language was a complicated thing, though. Nothing was simple; everything was caught in a vast web like a fly caught by a spider. Remove it from the web, and it would fly away and if you managed to catch it again, would it be the same fly? Perhaps it would turn into a butterfly and flap its ring and they would all drown in the rain. Was what was true for Simon true for River? Was what was true for River true for Simon?_

Before, she had seen things which had happened far away, places she had never been, had learned things she had been forced to forget. But now, in Simon, she sees only herself, and can't remember which River is Simon's River and which is River's River or which River is the River she wants to be.

Which River is real? It can't be hers--she is broken, insane. She reads it in Simon's mind.

"He will take care of us," Simon promises, but he means, I will take care of you_._

And he will; it is a welcome point of surety in her ever-changing universe.

She kisses him.

He wants it; his desire burns so strongly in him that it threatens to consume her. She gives herself up to it so that there is no longer Simon's River and River's River but a hollow woman and a raging bonfire. River is the fire and the fire is a river, a pneumatic force that cannot be escaped.

"River, no," he says, as if her were the Captain, as if he could command her. "I'm your brother." 

_"That boy left long ago," she answers. "Then a man came and rescued me." __She brings her lips to his again, and she knows he knows he will never be able to resist.

* * *

_"Make love to me," River said to him. "You want to do it."

"No," he lied. "I don't."

"Yes," she said, simply, forcefully, unbuttoning his shirt, kissing his chest. "You do."

He did.

* * *

Kaywinnit Lee Frye was a very beautiful woman. Although relatively uneducated, she was clearly intelligent. She was a lot of fun to be with. And she was quite clearly crazy about him. Kaylee Frye was everything Simon had ever wanted in a girlfriend.

Heck, in some ways she practically was his girlfriend. They hung out a lot lately, would go places together, had become friendly. Some of his courser friends at medacad would have called it all the duties of being a boyfriend with none of the benefits.

"Is it so bad here?" she asked him, and he knew what she wanted from him, and it pained him that he wasn't able to give her what she wanted. But how was he supposed to tell her that it wasn't that he wasn't interested in her, it's just that it wouldn't work because he was currently sleeping with his sister? "I don't even know if the captain'll let us--"

"No, but, isn't there anything about this place you're glad of?"

Simon just looked at her. He could just kiss her, and it would make her so happy, and River--he didn't know what he would do about River.

Then Book passed between them in the hall, and the moment passed, and he didn't have to figure it out.

* * *

"My true one regret in all this is never being with you." It wasn't even completely a lie, not really. Kaylee and he could have been happy together, if things had been different, if only--he didn't allow himself, would never allow himself, to finish the thought.

"With me? You mean to say, as, sex?"

Oh, Kaylee, he thought, his heart aching. Never stop being yourself. How much he wished he had been able to make her happy. At least now, with them both about to die, he could give her this much. "I mean like."

Kaylee snapped the cartridge into her gun, then took aim--surprisingly steady aim. "The hell with this. I'm going to live."

* * *

_It's not so hard being River's River, not anymore, now that Simon's River knows about Miranda and River's River knows that she knows. She's not cured, knows from Simon's thoughts she probably will never be, that her world will always be unstable and shifting, she will always be mad north-northwest, but some things, simple things, are clear now that never were before._

She' looks down at her brother, bleeding at her feet. "You take care of me, Simon," she says to him "You've always taken care of me. My turn."

* * *

"River, I--"

"Shh," River whispered as she lay a finger to his lips. "No words. Go to her. Make love to her."

He turned, then looked back, meeting River's gaze. After a moment, he nodded, and went to have sex with his new girlfriend who was not his sister, who would never be and could never be his sister.

River waited until he left the room, then pulled out a deck of cards, stripped it of its kings and deuces, and began to sing to herself softly as she dealt herself a solitaire foundation: "Gather ye rosebuds while ye may, old time is still a-flying. . . ."


End file.
